Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten together edited the highly influential Poetics Journal, whose ten issues, published between 1982 and 1998, contributed to the surge of interest in the practice of poetics. A Guide to Poetics Journal presents the major conversations and debates from the journal, and invites readers to expand on the critical and creative engagements they represent.

In making their selections for the guide, the editors have sought to showcase a range of innovative poetics and to indicate the diversity of fields and activities with which they might be engaged. The introduction and headnotes by the editors provide historical and thematic context for the articles. The Guide is intended to be of sustained creative and classroom use, while the companion Archive of all ten issues of Poetics Journal allows users to remix, remaster, and extend its practices and debates (click here for more information on the digital archive.)

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Table of Contents

Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten
Introduction

Part I: Numbers 1–4

Steve Benson
Close Readings: Leavings and Cleavings

Charles Bernstein
Writing and Method

Beverly Dahlen
Forbidden Knowledge

Alan Davies
Language/Mind/Writing

Robert Glück
His Heart Is a Lute Held Up: Poe & Bataille

Lyn Hejinian
The Rejection of Closure

Susan Howe
My Emily Dickinson

George Lakoff
Continuous Reframing

Jackson Mac Low
Some Ways Philosophy Has Helped to Shape My Work

Viktor Shklovsky
Plotless Literature: Vasily Rozanov

Ron Silliman
Migratory Meaning: The Parsimony Principle in the Poem

Barrett Watten
The Politics of Style

Constellation I: Practices of Poetics

Part II: Numbers 5–7

Kathy Acker
Ugly

Bruce Andrews
Total Equals What: Poetics and Praxis

Rae Armantrout
Mainstream Marginality

Michael Davidson
“Hey, Man, My Wave!”: The Authority of Private Language

Johanna Drucker
Hypergraphy: A Note on Maurice Lemaître

Carla Harryman
Toy Boats

George Hartley
Jameson’s Perelman: Reification and the Material Signifier

Bob Perelman
Good & Bad/Good & Evil: Pound, Celine, and Fascism

Poets Theater: Two Versions of Collateral
Kit Robinson: Raising Collateral
Nick Robinson: Subtext in Collateral

Leslie Scalapino
Pattern—and the ‘Simulacral’

Peter Seaton
An Example from the Literature

Warren Sonbert
Narrative Concerns

Constellation II: New Methods and Texts

Part III: Numbers 8–10

Pierre Alferi
Seeking a Sentence

Dodie Bellamy
Can’t We Just Call It Sex?

Arkadii Dragomoshchenko
I(s)

Jerry Estrin
Cold Heaven: The Uses of Monumentality

Harryette Mullen
Miscegenated Texts & Media Cyborgs:
Technologies of Body and Soul

Ted Pearson
A Form of Assumptions

Kit Robinson
Time & Materials: The Workplace, Dreams, and Writing

Andrew Ross
The Death of Lady Day

Lorenzo Thomas
The Marks Are Waiting

What/Person: From an Exchange
Leslie Scalapino and Ron Silliman

Reva Wolf
Thinking You Know

John Zorn
Memory and Immorality in Musical Composition

Constellation III: The Expanded Field

Keywords: Guide

Index: Poetics Journal 1–10

Index: Guide